Good morning. I am not in…

Good morning. I am not in support of Bill C-23 and the impacts it has to the Greenbelt. Though I support the urgency being displayed to work on addressing our province's housing crisis, I don't agree with the way in which we're going about it. Altering the Greenbelt is not part of the solution.

I have lived in and alongside the Greenbelt my entire life. I grew up on federally appropriated lands in the Markham-Stouffville area, spent my young adult years in the Region of Waterloo, and now am settled in Perth East county.

With a long-standing family history of farming, and having studied environmental resources for my undergraduate degree, I have always been a proponent of the Greenbelt and the benefits it provides to our human society.

The "golden horseshoe" area receives significant benefits from the Greenbelt. In fact, the Greenbelt provides Ontario with over 2.5 billion dollars of ecosystem services every year; things like water protection, flooding prevention, better air quality, habitats that protect biodiversity, and more. These services are preventative in nature. While it may be tempting in the short term to tinker with the Greenbelt to address one problem of housing, it ultimately only contributes to a larger problem that is not going away, and that is the climate crisis and health of our natural environment.

While the amendments being proposed to the Greenbelt include a net increase to dedicated land, they put our current cities and townships at risk by removing the aforementioned services in our most densely populated communities.

What's additionally concerning, is that the development projects that would occur if this bill is passed are estimated to provide a mere 50,000 homes. These homes have been designated by external parties as "luxury housing". This is a very, very small solution to the housing crisis which is about accessibility as much as it is about supply. What we need are not expensive, detached, single family homes. We need creative solutions to this problem that should involve building up (not out), making affordable homes, and prioritizing their development on land that is less rich in biodiversity.

Doug Ford and his government promised to never touch the Greenbelt, and now they're proposing we dig into it. While the amendments today impact only 7,400 acres, the likelihood of more development becomes inevitable. I am deeply disappointed and not impressed.